Research Projects

I. Advocacy in the United States and the European Union

My project Brussels vs. the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union is the first large-scale empirical study of lobbying in the US and the EU, two of the most powerful political systems in the world. Policies emanating from these two spheres have global impacts; they set global standards, they influence global markets, and determine global politics. Everyday, tens of thousands of lobbyists in Washington and Brussels are working to protect and promote their interests in the policy-making process.

The book investigates the strategic decisions those lobbyists make throughout the advocacy process. Each chapter details how institutional structures, issue-specific characteristics and interest-group factors blend to determine decisions about: how to approach a political fight, what arguments to use and how to frame an issue, what direct or inside lobbying tactics to employ, what public relations or outside lobbying strategies to use, and finally, in what networking and coalition activity to engage.

It is not only what lobbyists do in these two political systems that is interesting of course, but also to what effect. The last substantive chapter looks at how the same set of factors - institutions, issues and interests - affect lobbying success. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 150 advocates in Washington D.C. and Brussels, Belgium, as well as a massive store of case information on the random sample of 47 policy issues, the book uses rigorous empirical analysis to investigate the determinants of lobbying decisions and policy outcomes. Using publicly available information, each case was followed for more than a year after initial interviews to assess the outcome from the perspective of each advocate, allowing a systematic assessment of who got what they wanted, who did not, and who fell somewhere in between. The analysis blends qualitative evidence with quantitative statistical analysis to demonstrate that advocacy can be better understood when we study the lobbying of interest groups in their institutional and issue contexts.


II. Mobilizing the Displaced: The Role of International, National and Local NGOs in Mobilizing the Forcibly Displaced

When violent conflict or environmental disaster results in massive forced migration, communities experience a complete breakdown in social order. During displacement, either across borders or internally within a country, the displaced are faced with collective problems. In certain situations the displaced have mobilized and organized to solve the problems they encounter, in other situations malaise and reliance on international aid has led to vicious cycles resulting in a further breakdown of social order. International, national, and local NGOs play an important role in understanding when the displaced mobilize and when they do not.

This project is a multi-year, multi-country study of a large number of displaced communities that span geographical regions, and that vary on the cause of their displacement, the level of instability of the political context, the level of aid they are receiving from the international community, and the level of mobilization of the displaced to solve collective problems.
 

III. The Power of Institutions: State and Interest-Group Activity in the European Union

This project investigates the ways in which government activity, or demand-side forces, influence interest mobilization and formal inclusion in the policy-making process in the European Union. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 700 civil society groups active in the European Union, the analysis provides empirical evidence of three routes by which the EU institutions influence interest group activity: (1) direct interest group subsidy; (2) manipulation of the establishment and composition of formal arenas of political debate; and (3) broader, system-wide expansion of competencies and selective development of chosen policy areas.

The interest groups dataset can be downloaded here.

The consultative committee dataset can be downloaded here.

The codebooks can be downloaded here.


IV. Trans-national NGO Project

I am also affiliated with the Transnational-NGO project in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, led by Peg Herman, Hans Peter Schmitz, Bruce Dayton and Derrick Cogburn. Interviewing 180 T-NGOs about their organization, activities and accountability this project is aimed at better understanding how NGOs working across borders operate, why and how they might do so more effectively. 

The project website can be found here.